A Good Week: January 20 - 26, 2025

 

      Monday was a holiday, Martin Luther King Day. Normally we work most holidays, but since they had me do all the purchase orders on Friday that I normally do on Mondays because they weren't sure which vendors were going to be open on Monday, I would have nothing to do on Monday, so they told me not to come in.  Elder Rappleye still had to work.  Since we started doing town runs on Wednesdays, I've had a hard time staying on top of things, so it was a day to catch up.  I still managed to escape to the beach for a short time.  The weather wasn't the greatest and the beach was busier than normal because of all the tourist, but it was still relaxing to sit on the beach.

   When I came to pick up Elder Rappleye at the end of his shift, Mark and Denise DeHart, were at the motor pool visiting.  Mark worked with Elder Rappleye in the motor pool for the first 5 months we were here. It brightened up Elder Rappleye's day to see his old co-worker again.

    There was no FHE on Monday night because of the holiday.  When the students don't have classes, a lot of them go to town or go off to play somewhere on the island.

    The PCC put a new sign out along the highway in front of the PCC, so on Tuesday during my lunch break I went out to take a picture of the sign.  I think it's a much better sign.  It's bigger and the design of the sign is much easier to read as you are driving by on the highway.  I'm sure they are hoping it will draw more people into the Marketplace and PCC.

   Tuesday evening, we had a shift at the Hale Ohana luau.  The picture on the right shows all the leis ready to be handed out to the luau guests.  While I was standing at the entrance during a slow time, I looked out on the lagoon, which is right by where I stand, at the canoe that was passing by, and Bob and Tammy Cowley were on the canoe.  I waved and yelled "Aloha" to the canoe.  They saw me and came over to visit a little bit after they got off the canoe.

     After we were done with our shift, we quickly ate at the Gateway Buffet like we always do after a shift.  Then we had to hurry home to change out of our "aloha wear" and into missionary attire and head over to the visitor's center to attend the monthly senior devotional.

     Three of the senior missionaries spoke, Elder Burke, Sister Larson, and Sister Jolley, along with President Workman, a counselor in the mission presidency.  Sister Hudnall (pictured left) sang a special musical number.  She sings so well we all thought she was a former member of the Tabernacle Choir, but she told us that it is a big time commitment that she wasn't able to make.

      On this week's town run, they had us picking up drills at the only Home Depot on the island that we hadn't been to yet.  Now we can say that we have been to every Home Depot on the island - the total is 4 if you were wondering.

     On the second stop of the day, we picked up 4, 50-pound bags of fish food for the fish in the lagoon.  It's a good thing we had them load it into the back of the van because the fish food was pretty smelly.  We had to smell it the rest of the day.  That's the first time we have picked up fish food and I'm hoping it's the only time.  

      On Friday as I was working in my office, Sister Sauve and I heard music playing.  At first, I thought it was just recorded music.  We hear that all the time.  But the more we listened to the music, the more we thought it was someone outside playing a ukulele or guitar.  I stood up and looked out the window, and I saw the gentleman in the picture to the left sitting in the cart playing his guitar.  I grabbed my phone and walked out of the office.  I told him thank you for serenading us and asked if I could take his picture.   They are employees from the Samoan village picking up supplies.  While they were waiting for their supplies to be loaded, he was playing his guitar.

     After work on Friday, we decided it was nice enough to go hike to Kahuku Point, the northern most point on the island.  The purple dots on the map shows where we started (left-hand dot) and where we ended up (right-hand dot).  It's only about a mile one way and a mostly level trail along the beach.

We started out on the trail along the beach in sunny weather.  As we hiked to the point, it started clouding over.  You can see the cloudiness in the top right picture of the view looking back toward the Turtle Bay resort.  About halfway to the point, we came to a "Ahu" marker (top left and bottom right picture).  The plague explains that an "Ahu" identifies places of importance and sacred spaces.  They are constructed using Hawaiian dry stack masonry practices.  Near the end of the trail, we went through a portion of a bird sanctuary where we saw a lot of ibis birds (bottom left-hand picture).

     To our delight, we came across a monk seal basking on the beach.  Elder Rappleye totally missed seeing the seal on the way out to the point.  It camouflages really well among the sand and rocks.  We were lucky the seal was still there on the way back.  Elder Rappleye almost walked right past it again on the way back.  I had to tell him to stop walking and that the seal was just to the right of him.  Hawaiian law states you are supposed to maintain a distance of 50 feet from monk seals.  We were probably unintendedly closer than that, but luckily, we didn't disturb the seal's slumber.

     We made it out to the point and stood on the northern most point of Oahu (top left picture).  We have now visited the northern most (Kahuku Point), southeastern most (Makapuu Lighthouse), western most (Kaena Point) and southern most (Diamond Head) places on the island.  The surf was quite large that day (bottom right picture).  The top right picture is a view of Kahuku point as we were walking on the trail.

     We organized a group missionary activity to do the train ride in Ewa Beach.  It's an historic 2-hour train ride on the west side of the island.  Since it's over an hour away we got permission to use the 12 passenger PCC van to carpool most of the group there.  Here's the happy crew as we started out from the PCC motor pool.

 

  When we arrived at the train station, we all had to purchase our tickets.  We had just enough time to take a couple pictures of a few trains they had on display before we had to board the train.  When it was time to board the train, the train whistle blew, the conductor yelled all aboard, everyone found the seats they wanted, and off we went.

    The pictures to the right are some of the views along the ride.  I had in my head that we would be riding along the coastline and thought we would have a view of the ocean the whole way - not so!  We actually only had views of the ocean on a small portion close to the end of the line before we headed back to the station.  The train goes right through the Ko' Olina resort (top left picture).  The middle picture on the right column shows the Aulani Disney resort hotel.  It's a very beautiful resort.  The makai (ocean side view) are the top and bottom pictures on the right column.  The makua (mountain side view) is the middle bottom picture.

     On the return trip, the train made an ice cream stop.  We were all allowed to get off the train for about 25 minutes.  There was a small shopping center close by with an ice cream store, Black Sheep Cream Co., that most of us went to and bought ice cream.  We opted for a root beer float.  Elder Rappleye is enjoying his root beef float on the train car we rode in (top right picture to the left).

    When we arrived back to the train station, we made a quick visit to the toy train museum they have there.  We were amazed at the size and variety of the model train layout they had with trains of all different scales.  Such a fun town layout with a county fair, drive-in movie, train yard, and river with a waterfall.  Elder Rappleye used to have a train board when he was growing up, but this was way more elaborate than anything he had made.  It was very interesting to him.

    The weather cooperated for us, and we had a nice sunny day but not too hot.  The top picture to the left shows the senior missionary couples that were there - us, Elder and Sister Tate, Elder and Sister Zollinger, and Elder and Sister Boyer.  We all rode on the same train car.  The single sisters that came all rode on a different train car.

     The bottom picture shows our whole group.  Everyone rode in the van except the Boyers, who met us at the train station.

Left to right:  Sister Cindy Summers, Sister Shelley Peterson, Sister Kim Manley, Elder Zollinger (back), Sister Sheri Sauve, Sister Sally Zollinger, Sister Sharla Behan, Elder Charlie Rappleye, Sister Cathy Rappleye, Elder Jerry Boyer, Sister Ethelynn Boyer, Sister LaRae Tate, and Elder Ross Tate.

     On Sunday, we had the pleasant surprise of having the president of BYU - Hawaii, Elder (President) John Kauwe III, attend our church meetings.  He spoke in sacrament meeting and during the second hour he did a Q & A in both Relief Society and Priesthood meeting.  I snapped a picture of him answering questions in the Relief Society meeting (right-hand picture) and after the meetings, he was nice enough to let us take a picture with him (left-hand picture).  We were very impressed by his answers to the student's questions.

     We hosted Elder Mike and Sister Cindy Bates for Sunday dinner.  Elder Rappleye works with the Bates in the motor pool.  They are from West Jordan, Utah and live only a few miles from us, but we didn't know them before they came to Hawaii.  We've been wanting to have them over for dinner for quite a while but have never been able to schedule it until now.  It was enjoyable to eat and visit.  Cindy helped me do the dishes after we ate, so they are welcome any time!  We also played a new card game we got for Christmas from my brother - Taco vs Burrito.